Poll: Are tasers tools or weapons?

[RJ 17]

As pretty much everyone else has pointed out, weapons are tools (and in fact most tools can be used as weapons). I think the distinction you're trying to make actually lies in intended use. Specifically, a "weapon" is something designed specifically to do harm and potentially kill, a "tool" being something designed to - in the case of a tazer - simply subdue the suspect.

It all lies in the intent, as I pointed out in the thread the OP linked. Some guy was going through the first 3 pages saying "THE COP MURDERED HER! DOES RUNNING AWAY GIVE YOU EXCUSE TO MURDERED someone?! OF COURSE SHE IS GOING TO RUN WHEN FACED WITH GETTING PUT INTO AN AMERICAN PRISON JUST FOR DRUG POSSESSION AND A COUPLE LITTLE TRAFFIC ACCIDENTS (hit and run, actually, but this guy didn't like paying attention to facts) BUT THAT DOESN'T GIVE YOU THE RIGHT TO MURDERED HER!!!"

However to my knowledge, my breakdown of the situation in the following quote did well to silence his rantings about the cop MURDERING her.

Snip

Alright my friend, I have to speak up now. It's quite obvious that you have something against police authority. I don't care what you did or how the cops cheated you, but the entire base for your argument is wrong.

You keep saying "So she ran away, is that excuse to MURDER her?!" Of course it's no excuse to murder her...but the problem is he didn't murder her. Tazers are not lethal force, there was no intent to kill her. As numerous people have pointed out but you apparently choose to keep ignoring: he didn't pull out his gun and shoot her in the back. That's lethal force. That would have been a murder. Tazers are non-lethal force. Their intended use does not facilitate an intent to kill the suspect, only bring them to the ground. The injuries that girl sustained in her fall were an accident, not murder. She's not the first person that's ever been tazered while on the pavement, but she is one of the few that have suffered major injuries from being tazered.

The way you talk, you make it seem like the cop was grinning gleefully while laughing maniacally and looking for the way he could hurt her the most.

You said it yourself: it's all part of the game. Criminals commit crimes and try to evade arrest, cops try to prevent crimes and arrest the criminals. Each player in the game has certain tools at their disposal, a tazer being one of the cops' tools. If you get tazed, it's because you're resisting arrest...which is exactly what she was doing. Now if you're dumb enough to commit a series of crimes and then try to run from the cops, you've no one to blame but yourself for any injuries you sustain.

It's simple Cause and Effect:
Cause: You get taken in on drug charges and hit-and-run charges, decide your best option is to run away.
Effect: The police will chase you and use necessary force (i.e. a non-lethal tazer) to subdue and catch you.

You don't need to be waving a knife around or trying to beat the crap out of a cop for them to be justified in using a tazer. Any form of resiting arrest is justification for using a tazer. There is no way the cop could have known what was going to happen to her. To put it in your words: "that's just part of the game."

Suppose she was a drug runner flying down the highway in a high-speed pursuit. A cop up ahead deploys the spike strips and blows out her tires. This causes her to wipe out and go flying through the windshield to splatter on the pavement because she wasn't wearing a seatbelt. Guess who's fault that is: not the cop that deployed the spike strips, the criminal's for being a moron and running from the cops. I'm not saying all criminals will just give up and accept arrest, but they most certainly should. As this and many other videos will point out: when you run from the cops it never ends well.

That analogy makes a lot more sense than your disgruntled mall cop story...why? Because in the case of the mall cop you have the authority figure just snapping on someone who's essentially just standing there and beating the crap out of them. A more appropriate analogy would be if the suspect had grabbed a couple handfuls of crap and ran out of the store with them, prompting an overweight mall cop to chase after the suspect. The mall cop would likely use his tazer to stop the suspect. And guess what? That suspect has a chance of injuring himself on the fall as well. It's not the mall cop's fault if the guy gets hurt in the fall, the cop was just doing his job in preventing a shoplifter from escaping. By your logic, the second a suspect proves they can outrun a cop, the cop should do nothing but throw their hat on the ground and say "Awww shucks, I'll get you next time you rascal!"

Sure, it sucks that happened to the girl, but the cop didn't MURDER her. There were any number of different ways that she could have fallen, it just so happened she fell in one of the bad ones.

The person in question never responded to my comments, so I can only assume that he read them, had a change of heart, and slinked away quietly from the thread...

Wait...sorry, for a second there I forgot this is the internet and such a thing occuring is nigh impossible!

Anyways, the above quote is my thoughts on the matter, so now I'll leave you with a song that I think fits the subject rather nicely.

<spoiler=Warning: Explicit Lyrics>

 

[Sarge034]

In my view, a taser is a weapon, to be used only as a last resort.

All weapons are tools, and all tools can be used as weapons. This is nothing but semantics.

The real question is, "When is it ok to tase a person?" You will never find a "good" or "right" answer to this because everyone has a different opinion. People's beliefs rage from tasers should not be used at all to tasers should be the only thing used.

I believe that this chick got what she got. She chose to run from the cop when she was already detained and handcuffed. The lesion to be learned here is don't run from the cops or they will tase your ass.


Ow, and obligatory.....

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

 

[lRookiel]

Joking aside... I think it depends on the object in question.

Picture the crowbar, it's a tool that can be used as a weapon (SKULL CRACKER :3)... since the taser has no use other than incapacitating people, it is therefore not a tool, me thinks, it is an Alien a weapon.

 

[idarkphoenixi]

Is this even a debate? Of course it's a weapon. Weapons are designed with one purpose in mind: To either kill, or otherwise incapacitate other people.

But this is the entire problem with tasers, people think "oh, it's not lethal so let's just whip it out at every opportunity, derpy derp".

Firstly, it isn't 'non lethal', it's 'less than lethal'. There is a HUGE difference.
Second, tasers have commonly been known to kill people, or cause severe lifelong damage.

I've seen cops tase kids, old ladies, even animals. Why do they do it? Because they think it's a goddamn toy and that the fact it doesn't kill outright is a license to go at anything that moves. And people trust guys like this with a gun?? That's America for you.

 

[Berithil]

I'd say both, though its kinda hard to decide. It's considered as the same level of force as mace/pepper spray, so technically it would be more like a compliance tool, and a taser doesn't leave any permanent damage other than the two marks where the barbs hit, sooo... yeah kinda hard to tell. Kinda depends on what your definition of a weapon is.

And I still think the girl got what she deserved. You don't run from a cop, period. Who knows, she could of suffered the same injuries if he ran and tackled her. She would end up on the ground either way

 

[Random berk]

A tool can be used as a weapon yes, but it is still a tool because it was designed for a purpose other than beating someone's head in. A weapon on the other hand, is a device designed to kill, injure or threaten a person, and has no other reasonable practical application. That's how I see it anyway. I have to say, people claiming that a gun is a tool just as a hammer or crowbar is, strike me as being tools themselves.

 

[Casual Shinji]

It's specifically designed for attack, so I'd call it a weapon.

However, the fact that it's considered non-lethal makes abusing the device quite easy to set into the minds of police officers. Because afterall, it's non-lethal and it makes the job easier. Eventhough the taser can cause great harm depending on the person.

I'm not agianst tasers or cops having tasers, but there need to be some stricter guidelines on its usage.

Hopefully some military eggheads are working on a 100% non-lethal, non-harmful projectile weapon, so we'll never have cases such as that girl's.

 

[ablac]

I would prefer a dead criminal to one who goes to jail

Ah, the rich kid, living comfortable in a gated community in the millionaire's villa of his parents, without ever having seen anything in all his life, ventures out onto the internet to enlighten us with his moral views.

Iam so glad ridiculous people like this dont get listened to. I view a weapon as a tool only realistically designed to harm in some way with no other realistic purpose or the main purpose being harm. I cant see any other use for a tazer other than tazering realistically so i view it as a weapon. Tools have uses outside of dealing harm and so are different but its difficult to define a weapon without using the term tool. They should only be a last resort due to being a dangerous, risky method of subduing someone and are not in any way acceptable as an ordinary part of a normal officers equipment.

 

[ablac]

It's specifically designed for attack, so I'd call it a weapon.

However, the fact that it's considered non-lethal makes abusing the device quite easy to set into the minds of police officers. Because afterall, it's non-lethal and it makes the job easier. Eventhough the taser can cause great harm depending on the person.

I'm not agianst tasers or cops having tasers, but there need to be some stricter guidelines on its usage.

Hopefully some military eggheads are working on a 100% non-lethal, non-harmful projectile weapon, so we'll never have cases such as that girl's.

I think that would be impossible considering firing something at someone with it being powerful enough to hinder them is going to be in some cases at least harmful. I mean aside from causing people to stick in place somehow without the harm being done on initial impact i cant think of anything considering there are problems immobility in itself can cause people. And i dont really think governments are that interested in not harming people they are simply interested in making the police look less dangerous when infact they have armed them with highly dnagerous weapons and given them little training or respect to show restraint in their use.

 

[spartan231490]

I fail to see the difference between "weapon" and "tool of compliance". So, I'd say that the distinction is just pointless semantics.

What I feel is more relevant is that the taser designed to be less-than-lethal, as opposed to a bullet which is designed to to be lethal.

Lethal forces are for when the suspect is posing an immediate threat to others.
Less-than-lethal forces are for when the suspect isn't an immediate threat.

I clicked this thread with the intent to point out that there really isn't any such thing as a weapon. You can use a sword to cut a tree down or you could kill someone with a pen. The only thing that makes it a weapon is the person's intent to harm with it. So, yay for loving semantic argument.

I agree for the most part. A taser should be used as a tool of compliance.

It's completely-non-lethal(with one exception of use that I will get into later) and police officers are in a lot more danger than people realize. The average police engagement occurs at about 7 meters, or just over 21 feet. It takes the average person more time to draw and sight a hand-gun than it takes most people to run that distance from a standing start. This means that police officers are in danger of losing their lives to people not only with guns, but even with knives. I am all for them using any non-lethal means to reduce that risk.

Further, if you resist the police, even by running, you deserve whatever you get. You are choosing to take the risk, and you deserve what you get. Don't break the law, and don't run from the cops.

However, tasers can be very dangerous if used incorrectly. There have been several documented cases of people dying from being tased repeatedly in a short period of time. I personally think there should be a limit on how many times a suspect can be tased, somewhere between 3 times and 5. That would eliminate almost all of taser related deaths.

 

[Tsaba]

Any weapon is a tool, it all depends on the user in how they decide to apply it. Less than lethal weapons are designed to take the fight out of someone, a firearm can be applied to disable or kill the target, Christ, if you really want to get technical you can use a ball point pen as a weapon, it all depends on the user, it really does.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

Well since weapons are a type of tool no matter what way you look at the situation ultimately it is a tool.

 

[Del-Toro]

Weapons are tools. The distinction is that weapons are a specific variety of tools. I personally like the tazer: it's an alternative to the firearm, so in, say, a hostage situation, you can knock the fucker out, rescue the hostage and probably put him in front of a judge for his crime. I think tazer training needs to be changed so that it's users don't regard "non-lethal" as "can be used indiscriminately at any whim so enforce one's will without causing any long term harm". It needs to be used with a degree of care, but for those situations where a dangerous individual needs to be subdued now but, like a normal human being, you don't want to kill him unless you have to other choice, it's a fine tool of law enforcement.

 

[TitanDrone]

a weapon is a tool by design.

Using electricity, the taser is designed to be used by humans to subdue other humans. By applying the tool to solve a problem, the taser effectively becomes a weapon.

A weapon may not be obvious. Example: fine-masked netting can be a weapon in the war against malaria.


Reading the comments, I am sure many confuse the meaning of the two words. Using the word tool to correctly describe something like a firearm, may strike some as an attempt to trivialize the harm such technology can inflict. But, in linguistic terms, a weapon is a tool.

I like the word Firearm better because it is more precise. Using that as a model, we can call a taser what it is - an electrical firearm.

 

[Something Amyss]

On the other hand, many people seem to view tasers as tools of compliance. If the police don't like what you are doing, they can use a taser to stop you doing it.

Which is what they've become to the police. That was not their intent, but it is the outcome.

However, a less than lethal weapon is still a weapon. You could argue some sort of weapon/tool duality (Which isn't quite the same as the technicality that all weaponsa re tools), but it is a weapon.

I carried an expanding baton for years, and while my intent was solely to subdue, it was still a weapon, less than lethal or not. Hell, mine even had a safety tip to further reduce the risk of any permanent injury.

Like a Taser, it could still kill.

Tasers are often used unnecessarily as a first resort, and whether used as a tool or a weapon, it's still misuse or abuse.

 

[tsb247]

As pretty much everyone else has pointed out, weapons are tools (and in fact most tools can be used as weapons). I think the distinction you're trying to make actually lies in intended use. Specifically, a "weapon" is something designed specifically to do harm and potentially kill, a "tool" being something designed to - in the case of a tazer - simply subdue the suspect.

It all lies in the intent, as I pointed out in the thread the OP linked. Some guy was going through the first 3 pages saying "THE COP MURDERED HER! DOES RUNNING AWAY GIVE YOU EXCUSE TO MURDERED someone?! OF COURSE SHE IS GOING TO RUN WHEN FACED WITH GETTING PUT INTO AN AMERICAN PRISON JUST FOR DRUG POSSESSION AND A COUPLE LITTLE TRAFFIC ACCIDENTS (hit and run, actually, but this guy didn't like paying attention to facts) BUT THAT DOESN'T GIVE YOU THE RIGHT TO MURDERED HER!!!"

However to my knowledge, my breakdown of the situation in the following quote did well to silence his rantings about the cop MURDERING her.

Snip

Alright my friend, I have to speak up now. It's quite obvious that you have something against police authority. I don't care what you did or how the cops cheated you, but the entire base for your argument is wrong.

You keep saying "So she ran away, is that excuse to MURDER her?!" Of course it's no excuse to murder her...but the problem is he didn't murder her. Tazers are not lethal force, there was no intent to kill her. As numerous people have pointed out but you apparently choose to keep ignoring: he didn't pull out his gun and shoot her in the back. That's lethal force. That would have been a murder. Tazers are non-lethal force. Their intended use does not facilitate an intent to kill the suspect, only bring them to the ground. The injuries that girl sustained in her fall were an accident, not murder. She's not the first person that's ever been tazered while on the pavement, but she is one of the few that have suffered major injuries from being tazered.

The way you talk, you make it seem like the cop was grinning gleefully while laughing maniacally and looking for the way he could hurt her the most.

You said it yourself: it's all part of the game. Criminals commit crimes and try to evade arrest, cops try to prevent crimes and arrest the criminals. Each player in the game has certain tools at their disposal, a tazer being one of the cops' tools. If you get tazed, it's because you're resisting arrest...which is exactly what she was doing. Now if you're dumb enough to commit a series of crimes and then try to run from the cops, you've no one to blame but yourself for any injuries you sustain.

It's simple Cause and Effect:
Cause: You get taken in on drug charges and hit-and-run charges, decide your best option is to run away.
Effect: The police will chase you and use necessary force (i.e. a non-lethal tazer) to subdue and catch you.

You don't need to be waving a knife around or trying to beat the crap out of a cop for them to be justified in using a tazer. Any form of resiting arrest is justification for using a tazer. There is no way the cop could have known what was going to happen to her. To put it in your words: "that's just part of the game."

Suppose she was a drug runner flying down the highway in a high-speed pursuit. A cop up ahead deploys the spike strips and blows out her tires. This causes her to wipe out and go flying through the windshield to splatter on the pavement because she wasn't wearing a seatbelt. Guess who's fault that is: not the cop that deployed the spike strips, the criminal's for being a moron and running from the cops. I'm not saying all criminals will just give up and accept arrest, but they most certainly should. As this and many other videos will point out: when you run from the cops it never ends well.

That analogy makes a lot more sense than your disgruntled mall cop story...why? Because in the case of the mall cop you have the authority figure just snapping on someone who's essentially just standing there and beating the crap out of them. A more appropriate analogy would be if the suspect had grabbed a couple handfuls of crap and ran out of the store with them, prompting an overweight mall cop to chase after the suspect. The mall cop would likely use his tazer to stop the suspect. And guess what? That suspect has a chance of injuring himself on the fall as well. It's not the mall cop's fault if the guy gets hurt in the fall, the cop was just doing his job in preventing a shoplifter from escaping. By your logic, the second a suspect proves they can outrun a cop, the cop should do nothing but throw their hat on the ground and say "Awww shucks, I'll get you next time you rascal!"

Sure, it sucks that happened to the girl, but the cop didn't MURDER her. There were any number of different ways that she could have fallen, it just so happened she fell in one of the bad ones.

The person in question never responded to my comments, so I can only assume that he read them, had a change of heart, and slinked away quietly from the thread...

Wait...sorry, for a second there I forgot this is the internet and such a thing occuring is nigh impossible!

Anyways, the above quote is my thoughts on the matter, so now I'll leave you with a song that I think fits the subject rather nicely.

<spoiler=Warning: Explicit Lyrics>

I was extremely pleased to see your post here.

He was on another thread about a month ago screaming about how a woman who had barricaded herself in her bedroom, called the police, and waited for them while a man (armed with a knife) spent 20 minutes trying to break down her door to get to her. He screamed, "MURDER!" at the top of his lungs when this woman shot her attacker when he charged at her with his knife.

Apparently he thinks the lives of criminals are above those of uphold the law. This wouldn't be the first time he has taken the side of the, "Poor criminal," rather than that of lew enforcement or an innocent bystander.

It's a little backwards isn't it?

 

[ShindoL Shill]

It's a weapon.
It is a tool for use against humans to damage or incapacitate them. That's a weapon.

 

[CrystalShadow]

This is all semantics.

Though the intent behind the question is clearly about the amount of respect a tazer requires when being used.

It is essentially a question about whether it should be treated more like a gun, or if it's OK to use it with less care.

Now, the semantic argument is more straight-forward really.

Handcuffs are considered a weapon. (Legally defined as a class-B weapon, though I'm not actually sure what that means as such.)

And if something with such a specific and limited use as a pair of handcuffs is considered a weapon, it should be obvious that a tazer is a weapon.

 

[ace_of_something]

Umm well as a police officer and brother of 3 more police officer in different parts of the USA.

We are all trained that it is a weapon. It's called a LTL. Which stands for Less than Lethal. However, anything used incorrectly can become lethal. In this case the police officers did not follow any possible policy. Every dept. usually has rules of "DON'T HURT PEOPLE IN RESTRAINTS." So hopefully those guys' ass is on the line.

 

[WanderingFool]

Someone who I consider a very smart man told me this once, "There is no such thing as a weapon, for a weapon is simply a tool used to harm another."

Simply put, the taser is a tool, a tool meant for harming others while (usually) not being lethal. In fact, thats the main point of less-than-lethal weapons, to inflict less-than-lethal harm on someone. The fact that the situation resulted in the girl bashing her head against the pavement when tased is bad luck for the girl, but it could just have easily have happened the same way, only the girl didnt bash her head into the pavement.

Actually, I think if the girl would have not brained herself, most people would instead be mocking the girl for trying to run form the cop, and getting "pwned" by the taser.